Friday, May 17, 2013

Boy in the Berhof

BOY IN THE BERGHOF

_______________________________“I have built up my religion out of Parsifal. Divine worship in solemn form ... without pretenses of humility ... One can serve God only in the garb of the hero"—Hitler __________________________In many ways, BOY IN THE BERGHOF is like the futuristic science-fiction novel SWASTIKA NIGHT (1937) by Katharine Burdekin.SWASTIKA NIGHT by Katharine Burdekin is one of the most imaginative alternate histories ever written. It takes place in the near future — 2013 AH (meaning After Hitler) — with a medieval Europe run by gay Nazi knights who worship Hitler as a god. _______________________If this novel were re-written today, it might have a very common Philip K. Dick thread moving through it as with THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE; but it wasn't written today, it was written in 1937 by Burdekin, a pioneer in feminist science fiction. Reissued by the Feminist Press in 1985, this novel easily stands among the great dystopian novels like 1984 by George Orwell, BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley and WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin.